World Championships

Women’s Singles at the Worlds

By Tim Boggan

Athens Olympic Champion, China’s Zhang Yining, World #1 as the number on her back attests (organizers assigned top-player identification numbers according to world ranking), reached the quarter’s without losing a game. Perhaps the prospect of playing Zhang in the round of 32 made a player or two a bit faint-hearted, for right off the bat upsets occurred. Spain’s Sara Ramirez, 4^th-place finisher in the Feb. European Junior Top Twelve, knocked out Hungary’s Maria Fazekas, World #44, while San Marino’s unheralded Yan Chi Mei , with only a 13-11 win in the 2^nd preventing a straight-game loss, rallied to beat Belgium’s World #76, Li Yun Fei. After which, Yan, down 3-2 and at 10-all in the 6^th against Ramirez, again prevailed. I was surprised that North Korea’s 2004 Olympic Games silver medallist, World #23 Kim Hyang Mi, after quickly disposing of our Tawny Banh in the 1^st round, had then to play her PRK teammate, Ko Un Gyong, before going on to oust Hong Kong’s World #16, Zhang Rui, in 7.

Bracketed in a companion quarter’s with Zhang was a fun player to watch, the Belarus defensive star Viktoria Pavlovich, World #14. She had a comfortable advance over Thailand’s Anissara Muangsuk who’d eked out a 13-11 in the 7^th win over Taipei’s Olympic Qualifier Huang I-Hwa. It’d be nice if the International umpires would occasionally lift the scoreboard to the spectators in these close games, but they almost never did. Coming out to meet Pavlovich in the 8^th’s was the current Japanese Champion, Sayaka Hirano, who’s rocketed up the rankings (from #48 to #16 in just a few months). She’d downed Joanna Parker, daughter of England’s well-known player/coaches Don and Jill Parker, then stopped Germany’s 2004 Top 12 winner Nicole Struse in 7.

That brought Hirano to Pavlovich and a replay of “old style” top and chop play—with both players working hard to earn a point. Apparently the umpires weren’t prepared to time the match, call the Expedite Rule, for play sure seemed to go on and on and on—though, with Pavlovich mixing it up with her two different rubbers, interestingly. It was as if I were watching our 11-time U.S. Closed Champ Insook Bhushan steadily returning balls and looking to pick hit, though, unlike Insook, Pavlovich almost always favored a countering forehand. Early in their match, I heard one observer say, “Hirano can’t win, she plays the same ball all the time.” But the Japanese girl, momentarily impassive on missing, then nodding to self as if to say, “That’s o.k.,” kept at it, and the Belarus girl had to go 7 to beat her. On leaving the court, Pavlovich gets kissed by her coach and quickly pulls out her cell phone. Good news!

To reach the quarter’s and Zhang, Pavlovich would have to get by the winner of the Csilla Batorfi-Tie Yana match. Batorfi, Hungary’s longtime world-class professional, is getting chunkier every time I see her. However, though it’s been 13 years since she won the U.S. Open, she’s still capable of getting to the quarter’s in Pro Tour tournaments. Here, managing to last-second move to swat the ball, she opened by beating our 2004 U.S. Closed finalist Jasna Reed, 4-2. (See the Mar.-Apr., 2005 Table Tennis Illustrated’s Profile of Jasna, an almost unprecedented (6-page) coverage there of a player’s career.) Batorfi followed that win with another—a 7-gamer over Japan’s World #25, Aya Umemura, the 2003 U.S. Open Champion. Hong Kong’s Tie, meanwhile, showed why she’s World #7, scoring victories over the U.S.’s Jackie Lee and Italy’s Top 50-ranked Nicoletta Stefanova, Under 21 winner at both this winter’s Slovenian and Croatian Opens.

Trouble in the 16^th’s centered on the Chinese umpire and Batorfi’s usual high toss serve that allowed her to follow with a strong attack. The umpire repeatedly faulted Batorfi, said her high toss serve wasn’t vertical enough. Since the Hong Kong players were wearing playing shirts that said “Hong Kong,” then, directly underneath in smaller letters, “China,” the umpire should never have been a Chinese. One onlooker said that Batorfi did have to take an adjusted step or two during her high toss serve, but perhaps, given the humidity, the air-conditioning was on and this affected the ball. At any event, Batorfi, after refusing to play and instead carrying on with her advisors, so that for 15-20 minutes she vacillated between trying to quit the match (Tie at first wouldn’t accept her proffered hand) and agreeing with her coach to ask for a change of umpires (which I heard a European official was willing to grant but an Asian one was not) finally had had it, shook hands all around and left. Said she was an underdog to begin with, and that if you took away her major weapon she had no chance.     

There was also a delay during Tie’s match against Pavlovitch when some of the LG RE X COURT letters on the court surface were affected by the humidity and no longer staying down were peeling up, threatening to trip the players. Since they couldn’t be flattened, they had to be taken up. At 10-9 in the 1^st, Tie was holding to her strategy of playing ball after ball to Pavlovitch’s backhand, but then she made the mistake of putting one to her forehand and Viktoria unhesitatingly smacked it in. Patience did not appear to be Tie’s strong point, and this is what she needed against the extremely steady Belarus star. In winning the Croatian Open in January Tie had beaten World #4 Tamara Boros, but here, down 9-2 in the 2^nd and giving up a string of points in the 3^rd, she was too impatient and disgusted at missing shots to contend.

Ah, but how composed, how determinedly business-like Zhang Yining is. (On retrieving a ball she never breaks concentration, bat-bounces it on the floor as she quickly returns to the table.) In blanking Pavlovitch, she wins her 20^th straight game, and advances to the semi’s.

In this half of the Draw, Singapore’s 3-time Sportswoman of the Year, Li Jia Wei, the present U.S. Open holder and World #6, escaped Germany’s Danish Open finalist Kristin Silbereisen, 4-3. However, Li was to go no further, for our 8-time U.S. National Champion Gao Jun, now World # 19, faltering after an early lead (up 2-0, down 3-2), recovered just in time. Up 7-5 in the 6^th as the match is heating up, penholder Gao fans herself with her pips-out racket, gets into the point, misses and, ohh, spins around. When she loses the next point, it’s time for Time! Then 7-all, 8-all, 9-all. Ahead 10-9 after Li fails to return her high toss serve, Gao has a chance to hit in the game winner, misses. But then, after an exchange of socko points, she 13-11 prevails, and goes on to advance by taking the 7^th.

Another Singaporian, World #40 Zhang Xueling who returns to her native China to see her parents for about two weeks every year, goes down 4-2 to China teenager Cao Zhen, so Gao, up against World #12 Cao, 2004 China Open winner, needs another upset to reach the quarter’s. After losing the 1^st, Gao, though carelessly serving into the table edge at game-point in the 2^nd, starts a 3-game winning streak, blocking well and often flashing in those low, flat hits so hard for her opponents to return. In late stages of the 3^rd, edge ball winners are exchanged to the increasing intensity of the screaming fans (“CHIN-a!…CHIN-a!”), so Fate’s taking no side, and Gao wins it 13-11. The 4^th soon proves no contest, so that Cao is looking very un-Chinese, appears downright dispirited.

But, unexpectedly, Gao, ahead 8-7 in the 5^th, unaccountably goes soft, passively rolls two losers, and, after Cao, up 10-9, calls Time!, is forced into the 6^th. Now Gao is really cold. She loses her forehand play and with it 7 points in a row, 11 out of 13, 15 out of 19. What’s happening? Consciously or unconsciously she’s reluctant, afraid, to beat a Chinese Team member? (On the other hand, she had beaten Wang Nan at the last two World Cups.) When she goes down 2-0 in the 7^th, those relatively few supporters she has, faced with this turn-around, can’t talk, can’t hear—for deafening the stands is rhythmic horn-play accompanied by a resounding chorus of  “CHIN-a! CHIN-a!” But just as suddenly as she lost it, Gao, keeping her poise, as if she remembered that almost 15 years ago she was a World Champion, found her strength again. Up 6-4, Gao about to start her serve motion, is preyed upon by crowd noise deliberately attempting to distract her. She starts to serve again, and again the distraction. Gao stops, smiles, turns to the crowd, as if to say, “Come on, I don’t deserve this.”

Only now it’s not Gao who succumbs to the pressure, it’s Cao. She just chokes the rest of the way in. No wonder walking away from the court she tries with a towel to hide her tears, her own earlier words ironically having come back to haunt her. “I hope you beat Li Jia Wei,” she’d said to Gao, “I’d rather play you than her.”

Nothing so dramatic in the companion 8ths, but certainly a match there worthy of note. As anticipated, Croatia’s World #4, Tamara Boros, meets Hong Kong/China’s World #17, Lin Ling, formerly a Chinese National Team member. My friend, Zdenko Uzorinac, the Croatian historian, is hoping for Boros to shine here in Shanghai, for Croatia is hosting the next (2007) World Individual play, and it would help attendance if Boros, who eliminated our Gao Jun at the 2003 World’s, could be considered a dangerous threat to the Chinese. In the 1^st, Lin is faulted on serve for not having moved her free hand away (this even while the ITTF was in the very process of changing the controversial rule so that the hand may now remain in front of the body so long as it’s not between the ball and the net). But Lin is not unduly disturbed by the call, and Boros’s vaunted backhand is just unsteady enough to allow Lin a 12-10 opening-game win. Thereafter, with the Croatian favoring her high, high serves, but too often being forced to scramble to stay in the point, the match goes 4-2 to Lin, with no further games straining either player to the wire. Unhappily for the Americans, in the quarter’s, Gao, after her two 4-3 wins, is just too tired to put up more than 1-game resistance against Lin.

In the other half of the Draw, China’s World #3, Niu Jianfeng, 2003 Asian Champion, zips into the 8^th’s, there to meet Hungary’s World #22 Krisztina Toth, 4-2 advancer over Austria’s 2005 European Top 12 Champion Liu Jia. In the 1^st, Toth, with entertaining lob saves and stretch forehands, draws to 6-7, then, from 8-10, deuces it, and with the help of two awful points by Niu, takes a 1-up lead. Only from there, as the high-up Grand Stage venue screen shows a close-up of her talking to self, it’s increasingly hopeless for the Hungarian: she loses 8, 8, then is behind 8-0 in the 4th (the massacre stopped only when Liu misses a hanger), and down 10-5 irrecoverably in the 5th.

Meantime, Hong Kong’s Lau Sui Fei, World #11 who beat Niu Jianfeng in the 2004 World Cup, has a chance of getting to her again? Not a good one. She advances to the 8^th’s with a 4-2 win over North Korea’s Kim Hyon Hui that brings autograph hunters reaching down to her from the stands, but then loses a close one to 19-year-old Chinese chopper Fan Ying, 2003 Asian Cup winner. Fan, however (raising that racket straight up, it’s as if she’s about to split wood), is no match for her World #5 teammate Guo Yue. At last December’s Pro Tour Grand Final, Guo defeated Niu to take the title, the youngest at 16 to do so. Now in the quarter’s they play again—with Guo again winning over Liu…her Women’s Doubles partner here.

In the remaining section of the Draw, China’s Guo Yan, 2003 Korean Open Champ (these top players, most of whom are playing shakehands, attend so many tournaments it’s a foregone conclusion that all of them have major titles), quickly reached the 16ths where in advancing she gave up two games to Japan’s 16-year-old Ai Fukuhara whom the Japanese press have been touting as a super talent ever since she made the National Team before even reaching her teens. Hong Kong’s World #20, Song Ah Sim, kept pace with Guo by beating Korea’s best defender, World #10 Kim Kyung Ah. In the 8ths, however, when Song, down 2-0, lost the 3^rd 16-14, she was too far gone to put any pressure on Guo who, preparing to serve, usually gives 18 or so little covered bounces to the ball on table and racket.

Romania’s lefty looper Mihaela Steff, World #13, went down in the 16ths to lefty penholder Li Jiao of the Netherlands. There hadn’t been many upsets in the early rounds, but Korea’s 21-year-old Moon Hyun Jung, World #52, had little trouble with aging pips-out hitter, Romania’s Otilia Badescu, while of course China’s Defending and 3-time consecutive World Champion Wang Nan swept away her opponents 4-0. But then…hard to believe, Moon, up to the table, pressing her penhold attack, upset Wang, 11-8 in the 7^th after Wang had momentarily 14-12 escaped in the 6^th. The Chinese superstar’s coach told a reporter that his charge wasn’t used to her unseeded opponent’s playing style. Believe that? Now even if Wang wins the Women’s Doubles with Zhang Yining as expected, she can only tie, not surpass, the iconic Deng Yaping’s 18 major world titles. After 26-year-old Wang lost in the Dec., 2004 Pro Tour Grand Final she insisted she wasn’t upset—said, “I see myself as a national team rookie who has just started a career.” That sounds so ridiculous, next thing you know she’ll retire.

Wang didn’t go home empty-handed. She still had Doubles to play. Her fans gave her 10,001 red roses that caused her to cry in gratitude. And she also received “a half-size duplicate of the women’s singles trophy for winning three consecutive titles between 1999 and 2003.”

 “Moon’s offensive style of play gave us a wake-up call,” said Li Xiaodong, Wang Nan’s coach. “She represents the future of the women’s table tennis.” Moon and Li now go at it to see who’ll lose to Guo Yan in the quarter’s, and the outcome is long in doubt, though early in their play it doesn’t look like it will be, for Li is up 2-0 and 6-3 in the 3^rd, whereupon she loses 6 in a row and Moon is back in the match. At 10-all in the 4^th, Li scores with a gutsy counter and takes a 3-1 lead. At 7-all in the 5^th, however, she takes a wild swing, and at 9-all she’s back from the table and of course loses the point and then the game. In the 6^th, Li’s behind 6-1, 10-4, but, taking over the topspin attack, gets to 10-9 before falling. In the 7^th, Li’s down 5-1, but then Moon rather collapses (“Nerves! Too much Chinese pressure!” says vacationing, off-duty Editor Larry Hodges of the screaming Chinese fans). The match having turned in her favor, Li, up 9-7, serves fast to the forehand, jabs a winner into Moon’s backhand, and goes ahead triple match point. “CHIN-a! CHIN-a!”

But Moon, now resolute, is rewarded, for when at 10-9 Li swats what ought to be the match-winner, an eye-level ball, it comes back off the net where Li, as if in punishment, instinctively gives it another swipe. But it’s not Li who finally wins this tense match, it’s Moon who loses it with errors, whiffing the last ball. Li drops in relief to the floor, then is up waving and dancing round the court to thunderous applause, after which she’s embraced by her coach who keeps vigorously patting her on the back.

Now for the semi’s, and what’s this? Zhang, whom a reporter for the Shanghai Daily said would “entertain” Lin Ling today, loses the 1^st 12-10. An upset’s in the making?…Not a chance—though both girls can put on quite a countering show. Lin’s down 8-1 in the 2^nd (Zhang’s snap backhands into Lin’s far forehand proving effective). Lin’s down 8-3 in the 3^rd. Lin’s down 10-3 in the 4^th. Lin’s down 7-3 in the 5^th.

In the Guo/Guo semi’s, following a great exchange that brings the score in the 1st to deuce, Guo Yan, described in Table Tennis World’s hard-to-find, beautifully done Chinese/English Program, as playing “a manly game,” whiffs and loses 12-10. But though both players instantly, artfully, anticipate where the fast-caroming ball is going, Guo Yue is not to win another game. Indeed, in the deciding 5^th, she appears, despite her youthful, high-level experience (in 2003, only 15, she and her partner won the Pro Tour Final Women’s Doubles), a mite flustered. Having led 8-2, she mis-serves at 8-all, loses 8 in a row, and the match.

Think 22-year-old Zhang Yining—who began playing when she was 5, who 6 years ago on losing the World Singles final to Wang Nan had vowed to one day be the Champion, and whom now fabled Chinese Coach/Official Cai Zhenhua calls “the leader of the Chinese team”—will win the Volkswagen convertible that sits just off court?  Well, of course she will. Who else could?